Portland city politics may undo baseball park

Ellerbe BecketOfficials close to the deal have estimated that a proposed minor league baseball stadium in Lents Park could have 6,500 to 9,000 seats and possibly a grassy area in the outfield where families could picnic and tickets would be less expensive. But so far nothing has been designed or approved.

City Hall politics is hanging up the deal to build a new baseball stadium in Lents Park.

City officials have worked out an $85 million financing deal to move Triple A baseball to a new Lents stadium and renovate PGE Park for the Portland Timbers' Major League Soccer debut in 2011.

While Commissioner Randy Leonard and Mayor Sam Adams support the deal, Commissioner Dan Saltzman is still pondering whether he will vote for it a second time. Saltzman was the deciding vote on March 11, when the council split 3-2 over the plan to put a new baseball stadium in the Rose Quarter.

That deal fell apart in late April. Since then, Leonard, Adams and Merritt Paulson, who owns both the Beavers and the Timbers, have worked to bring the stadium to Lents.

In the latest deal, more than $40 million of the money for the baseball stadium would come from the Lents urban renewal district, requiring a major shift in the neighborhood's long-sought redevelopment plans.

Leonard, who's spearheading the effort to build the ballpark in Lents, said the community's residents ultimately will decide the issue. He said he will take the proposal to the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Advisory Committee once it's clear the council has three votes to pass it. But he said if the committee shoots it down, the deal is over.

Opposition is heating up. A group calling itself the Friends of Lents Park is seeking to save the park as open space. It will meet for the first time Wednesday.

The Lents deal has languished at City Hall for a couple of weeks as Saltzman has continued to ask questions about parking, taking city park land for a private enterprise and relying so heavily on redevelopment money.

While he continues to study the proposal, Saltzman has pushed back against pressure to make his decision public, even canceling a meeting last week with Leonard. He declined to comment on the plan Monday through his chief of staff, Brendan Finn. Finn said Saltzman will meet this week with the city's finance managers.

Leonard said he's frustrated that Saltzman isn't signaling where he stands. He and Adams have postponed putting the deal on the City Council's agenda for a discussion until Saltzman gives his assurance that he's in support.

"We're close, but we don't have an agreement because the details matter," Adams said. "We're going to take the time we need to get this right."

Leonard has pushed the stadium for Lents despite earlier efforts by Paulson and Adams to allow the baseball team to move to Vancouver or Hillsboro.

Paulson's lease on PGE Park is up in 2010 and he suggested he might move the team to another metro-area city so the Timbers could play in PGE Park if Portland balked at building a new baseball park. In March, he paid $35 million for a Major League Soccer franchise, one of two expansion teams awarded.

But Leonard said he wouldn't back the soccer deal if it forced the Beavers to leave Portland. He said he sees a ballpark in Lents as the best opportunity to change the economic and social dynamic of the hardscrabble community.

"I'm willing to bet my political future to have this built in Lents," he said. "You have to take risks to get to a better place. I would hate to see this built in Clark County or in Hillsboro."

The $85 million deal calls for spending $48 million for the baseball stadium and $37 million to remake PGE Park. It's significantly different from the last agreement to build the baseball stadium at the Memorial Coliseum site in the Rose Quarter and requires a smaller contribution from taxpayers.

Instead of paying rent and a 7 percent ticket tax for 25 years to cover city-backed loans, Paulson would make rent and ticket tax payments for the first seven years. He would also immediately put $17.5 million in cash into the construction projects, which would be applied to his rent and ticket taxes for years eight through 25.

Here's how the financial responsibilities shake out:

The city would borrow $49.8 million -- $42.3 million against future property tax revenue from the Lents Town Center Urban Renewal Area and $7.5 million against the Spectator Facilities Fund, which collects rent, ticket taxes and parking receipts from PGE Park and the Rose Garden. The city also would contribute $1.2 million from Spectator Fund reserves. Total city contribution: $51 million.

Paulson would contribute $7.5 million in cash in addition to the $17.5 million in capitalized ticket taxes and rent payments on both stadiums. And he's promising to secure $5 million in state funding. Total Paulson contribution: $30 million, not counting his purchase of the soccer franchise.

That leaves another $4 million, which would be available from the loans if the city could sell less expensive tax-exempt rather than taxable bonds. If the tax-exempt bonds aren't available, Paulson would be responsible for making up the $4 million.

Paulson also will be responsible for cost overruns. The city had agreed to pay $2.5 million of overruns under the Rose Quarter scenario.

Paulson is seeking $5 million from the state through House Bill 2531, which would skim income taxes off soccer team salaries. The bill is moving through the House, although Gov. Ted Kulongoski through his aides has said he won't sign it.

Several unresolved issues are sure to spark lively City Council debate. Among them: Much of the Lents urban renewal money that would go to the stadium is now dedicated to affordable housing projects. The stadium would eat up as many as 16 acres of the 38-acre Lents Park. And the Pacific Coast League requires at least 1,500 parking spaces, but there would be little room for them without decimating Lents Park.

The council eventually will hold a public hearing on the proposal, though one hasn't been scheduled.